Reviews

What does a good action movie requires? I'll say two things: good action sequences, and well build characters. You just can't have one without the other, usually we get the first one, but rarely the second. This applies equally to a regular action movie or, in this case, one of the martial arts type. When you end up watching a good action movie you will remember these two things: the action sequences and the characters.

In the case of the Raid, you might remember several of the fight sequences, all of these very well made, from the stunt men to the direction and editing. Now here comes the problem, you are not going to remember a single character, and if you do, do you remember their motivations? See, in an action movie, both the good guys and the bad guys need motivations to fuel what they do. You could say this applies to any other movie as well. For the sake of keeping things simple, an action movie doesn't need complex motivations, but at least it needs the most basic ones in order to make us care about what is going on.

The Raid lacks characters with motivations, so all we are left with are extended action sequences that go on and on. The movie suffers from this mantra of "more is better" and it throws away proper pacing in exchange for non-stop senseless and aimless action sequences. Is not enough to have people shooting and fighting and stuff exploding, you need something behind the mayhem. The Raid gives us nothing, no character to care about. Every single character is interchangeable.

It has become a cliché to say that a movie sometimes looks like a video game, and it's ironic considering how hard many games these days try to look like a movie. The Raid truly feels like a game, one in the vein of those arcade beat em ups like Final Fight, Double Dragon, Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, Streets of Rage and so on. We get a brief intro, usually a girl being kidnapped, we get a hero to choose and there you go, beat everyone on your path. Also, while you can forgive many things in the plot of an action movie, the movie just gets dumb for the sake of it. The bad guy has cameras everywhere, yet he can't pin a single guy, and he sends just a small group of people, none of them with guns. Some have machetes, but why would they want to use that when they could just gun down the few remaining good guys? Oh right, there wouldn't be any fight sequences left. Is like if in Die Hard Hans decided to tell his goons to look for Mclaine with knifes because that's more "honorable" or something like that.

If you are an action aficionado you will dig this, no question about it, but i don't think you will remember much of it. Again, the fights are very well done, far better than in Merantau, but the emptiness of the story and the characters will just make you feel that way, empty. It's like a very tasty fast-food snack that just won't satisfy your hunger. Good for a while, but in the longer term, you want something that has more meat to eat.

Mr Oshii is the kind of director you can't fully dislike; the man has some interesting ideas, he knows how to create mood, yet at the same time he suffers of a severe case of minimalistic obsesivus. Staring at a character staring at the sky for 5 minutes is not deep, is not provoking, is just...boring, and dull.

There's little to no plot here, pilots that never grow old seem to be fighting in ambigous conflicts for corporations. They are mercenaries for hire, and we take a peek at their rather dull and not very interesting lifes. Fighting, going back to the hangar, visiting prostitutes and repeat. Character interaction, dialogues and, well, anything that looks like movement, or that could approach an engaging situation, remains as short as possible. What was the movie trying to say? That war is senseless and endless and it makes you feel nothing after a while and...something else? Who knows, and sadly, who cares, because it's impossible to care about this movie, or even remember much of it.

Why indeed? How could the maker of a fantastic movie as Tears of the Black Tiger end up doing such a cliché, dull, and idiotic action flick? Not even the action is well directed, suffering from the jerky-camera syndrome of this day and age. The script is such a mess, why the year 2016? The eco-friendly message is forced and preachy, the characters are one dimensional, from the goofy detective to the bad guys, and the pacing is off and all over the place. Then comes the ending and slaps you in the frigging face. Sorry mr wisit but if you need two entire movies to tell such a broken story you are doing something wrong.

Is not a movie you hate so much as a movie you want to pat in the back. We really don't need another "gritty" reboot of a super hero, we just need a well made action/adventure flick.

There are always so many sides in a war, so many stories, so many angles. We come to think of these conflicts as just one side against another, with not much in between. The facts remain the same: the people who order these wars rarely, if ever, go to fight them. Who fight for them is the average man, either by conviction or force or a combination of both. This film is a view on the struggle of what was once an average man, who saw death and destruction, and just wants answers regarding the fate of his friends in a senseless conflict.

We follow him on his daily routine, his ritual of going to the streets and protest. In a society that punishes the will of the individual, that thinks remaining in silence is the right thing to do, our protagonist is seeing as an odd fellow. His countrymen just want to forget about this chapter in their history, they want to bury any memory regarding these events. Bury them for good, him included, but this man won't rest until he has his truth, no matter what, no matter the cost.

At many points during the film we will see him going into passive-aggressive outbursts, his frustration is contagious. The people he encounter avoid him with the most obtuse answers "i don't remember, i don't know, i wasn't there". When the man snaps and starts kicking another person you might not support his actions, but you can understand why he's doing it.

Hard to follow at times, but hard to stop watching it, this is a highly engaging docummentary. A naked emperor and his naked army marched once for empty promises made to an entire nation. History won't forget about this, no matter how hard some try to.

Super deadly killer with super human strenght, reflexes and what not starts a friendship with a girl that lives in the same apartment building where he lives. The mother of the girl is in trouble with the mob, the little girl is in danger, our hero awakes from his slumber and goes super saiyan level 4 and wrecks hell on mobsters.

That's about it, now, the problem is, among other things, how the protagonist is pretty much invincible. He gets the obligatory action cliché scene where they have to remove a bullet from him, but aside from that he destroys his enemies so easily there is little to no tension in the action sequences. The friendship between him and the girl is also rather dull and never feels very convincing, or engaging. Add a highly annoying stupid detective and you have a set of insipid characters. The action sequences range from decent to average, while there are some nice camera tricks here and there, one including a continuous shot going from inside a building to the street, other moments suffer from the jerky-camera syndrome of today's action cinema. Performances are also very painfully average.

Not really worth of the cult status some people are throwing to this one. OK to kill a rainy Saturday, but even so, you might just want to pick a better action movie.

A group of "scientists" who watched too many History Channel specials take a blind trip to a planet to discover what could possibly be an ancient alien race that created mankind. Problem is, these "scientists" behave straight out of a Scooby Doo episode, they do stupid thing after stupid thing. Then these "superior" beings appear and they behave even dumber, for such a "superior" form of life they behave no different than a pack of wild animals.

All the characters have paper thin motivations (as in none) there are situations that pop out of nowhere because the script said so and at the end we have another average so-called scifi horror flick. Forget about the director, or the connection to his previous superior sci-fi suspense film. This movie has no idea what to do with it's premise aside from being another loud bang CGI extravaganza that nobody is going to remember. An OK movie to kill some hours? Some could say that, there is some nice attention to detail and cool sets, but what's the point if the script is such a terrible mess? Real tension should come from well written characters and situations, not because we need a "climatic" scene where nasty looking creatures attack the hero. The movie is trying to be two things at the same time: a "serious" sci-fi story, and a suspense-horror thriller, yet it fails miserable on both areas, specially the first one. That this movie is taking itself so seriously is what makes it even more annoying.

In short, this is a mindless shock movie pretending to be "high" art. They even rip-off Carpenter's The Thing at one point. What else could i possibly tell you about this mess? It's a glorified b-movie, that will be quickly forgotten in a couple of months.

If "The Passion" was a display of the symptoms of a serious mental illness, Apocalypto reflects Mel's juvenile hollow side as a director. It's really hard to tell what this movie is suppose to be: an action movie, a history lesson or some kind of spiritual journey of sorts? It fails at any of them, as an action movie is dumb and full of lame clichés, as a "history lesson" the less we talk about it the better, as a "spiritual" journey, i don't think the term even applies. Finally, is not an engaging movie, it takes itself way too seriously, when it's almost impossible to take anything seriously here. Just like the Passion it will numb your senses instead of stimulating them in any way possible. From it's one dimensional characters to the constant use of predictable action clichés.

A pointless movie on all fronts, better just watch the history channel to see the goofy guy with the goofy hair talking about how everything has no logic explanation, therefore, aliens!

Another movie based on Alan Moore's work, another failure in every way. Written by the geeks who created (and destroyed) the matrix franchise V tries so hard to be two things at the same time: an action movie and a socio-political commentary of sorts. It mostly fails at both, but specially at the second area.

The premise of a single man taking over an entire government is not an easy premise to develop in a believable and convincing way. In the case of V we have a character that want's to revolt the masses to turn against the authorities. The problem with this script is that it never makes up it's mind on how it wants to present "V", he's a terrorist, but he's looking for revenge, he's a loony but he's sophisticated. At the end he's really just the charismatic Shepperd leading the flock. He's just another authority figure trading places with the other authority figures. He just happens to wear a very cool mask, and a suit full of knifes.

The movie also has no idea what to do with all it's political commentary, how to aim it properly, how to give it any weight whatsoever. England is controlled by a cartoonish religious/fascist state, complete with an evil big brother guy in a big TV always throwing orders at his inept employees. Went it comes to dealing with V this forces of the law seem to be unable of doing even the most simple and logic task. How can a man that is searched by the entire state can ship a bunch of masks to thousands of people across the country? Using every-day shipping service?

Once more, is not that the premise can't give us a good story, and good characters, is just that the wachachoskis have not even the slightest idea of how to handle the material. Other phony "evil" characters appear here and there, and at the end the entire logic of the movie is nothing more than a black and white picture where V is the good guy and the state is bad and that's it, there's your entire plot development right there. There's a very solid supporting cast doing what they can with the material. Sthepen Rea cringes at every line he spokes, Hugo Weaving at least has the mask to cover himself from the embarrassment. John Hurt hams it up, Stephen Fry brings some charm. Natalie Portman on the other hand gives yet another high-school-musical level of performance. This woman has nothing to do in front of a camera.

Sure, watching stuff blow up with the 1812 overture is cool to watch, but when there's nothing to back up all those images then there's a big problem with the material. The wachowskis should never, ever try to write anything else in this vein again. Think of the children please.

Really, Nancy Reagan would be so proud. I was expecting to see Mr T at any moment telling the viewer to say in school FOO!

No really, that's the whole movie, a bunch of people doing drugs, then bad stuff happens to them because of their heavy addictions. That's it, that's the whole movie, no gray area here, nothing to discuss or evaluate. People doing drugs = people suffering from drug abuse. If you're looking for character development or a deep and complex story look somewhere else. There's just one thing to get from this movie, drugs are bad, like really really really bad. Nothing more, nothing less.

So, Robert Rodriguez tries to make a sci-fi/high school flick, you take the plot from Invasion of the Body Snatchers, add The Breakfast Club and mix it with some John Carpenter imagery that Rodriguez stole...err, i mean, "paid homage". The result? A mess, every character is a walking cliché written in a napkin: the nerd, the hottie, the bad boy, goth girl, you name them. If you already watched any version of Body Snatchers you just know what is going to happen. Rodriguez never manages to make a single moment tense whatsoever, and again, with such lame characters, who cares? "Yeah dood but you don't get it, the movie is suppose to be a parody/satire/spoof!" Err, no, it isn't, it's trying to be a honest attempt at being a sci-fi horror flick. It's 100% serious about what is doing, and it fails miserable. Those two scenes straight out of the The Thing are embarrassing. Sometimes the best way to pay homage to something is by not doing anything at all.

But oh well, the natural movie balance gives movies like this their proper place. Discount bins and re-runs on TV at times where nobody watches the damn thing. Mark yet another genre that Rodriguez can't do right. Hopefully the list doesn't grow bigger with time.

Dumber and more annoying than the first one, Alice now has mental powers, can walk down walls and has x-ray vision, so she can calculate the exact moment in which she crashes down a church with a bike right over two enemies. The cast is as disposable as the one in the first movie, the direction less obsessed with matrix gimmicks, but equally easy to forget. The plot is still as interesting as counting cracks in a wall: citizens trying to escape zombie infested city, yes, Paul WS Anderson once more makes zombies boring. Talk about having the magic touch of dullness.

Anything else to know? There's a token black guy providing comic relief, a sassy female reporter (and surprisingly this is not a Van Damme movie) and bad guys with British accents. Every minute that passes feels dumber and more boring. If you are done with puberty there's no way you could be enjoying this. There are amateur films in youtube about zombies with more creativity than this derivation of a dozen of better zombie movies. Also Paul, i know Milla is hot, and your wife and everything, but she's about as good at acting as you are directing and writing. Stop doing this, for everything that is sacred in this world, just stop and go back to direct music videos, matrix fan films or whatever you were doing before trying to make real movies.

Paul WS Anderson, creator of such classics as Soldier, and Mortal Kombat.....brings us a new entry in the Matrix franchise. This time Neo is undercover as a female agent in a mansion, probably infested with agents. Umbrella corporation is some sort of super duper pharmacy group that controls half of the world. Are you a bad enough dude to endure this awful mess of a movie?

Oh wait, that's not Neo, is that hot chick from the Fifth Element. Who told her to get a lead role? In an action movie? Wait wait, action movie? Sorry once more, seems that somebody gave some nerd with zero creativity a bunch of money to shoot a matrix fan film, in a lab under a mansion with zombies. Why? I have no idea, but the results aren't pretty.

So, how do you mess up something as simple as making a fun zombie movie? Follow the RE guideline:

-Add a bunch of gimmicky, annoying and irritating camera angles, matrix-esquire slow mo and other pointless stuff that never ever looks "cool" at all. -Write a bunch of napkin-one-dimensional characters, all of them interchangeable, and just kill like half of them before the first act concludes. -Write stuff that doesn't make sense, and is not fun to follow, or interesting at all -Yeah dood totally use slipknot in the soundtrack! That's a great idea....if you're 15 and wanting to make your parents angry.

There you go, the result is this insipid disaster, who is now on the 4th film. There is a market for this needless to say, but then again, there is a market for people with a fetish for seeing women on the internet stomping over eggs. At least the stomping is not in SLOOOOOOW MOTION over and over....not that i know.

The Boondock Saints, a power trip macho-vigilante flick from 1999 has become a bit of a cult item within a very specific crowd. Why? Who knows, cult movies are not always good movies by default. Boondock is by far one of the most worthless movie that could had ever get any kind of following whatsoever. Let's skip right away the vigilante agenda going on, which goes without saying that is silly and one dimensional beyond belief. Let's even skip all the poorly made attempts of "black humour", which for Troy Duffy just consists of having the "heroes" molesting corpses of females, saying the f word a million times and using a toilet as a weapon in the most improbable way you could think of.

No no no, forget all that, what it boils down to it's this: Boondock Saints is not a fun movie to watch, at all. Duffy thinks he's John Woo in his prime, and decided to shot every single shooting sequence in this mess in SLOOOOOOOOW MOTION, making it a complete bore to watch the same gimmick over and over. There's never any tension whatsoever in any of the confrontations, the "heroes" just blast everything and everyone without any effort. Then there's the second gimmick, Dafoe's character pretty much just telling you what happen in each scene, and then show us a flashback of said scenes, with even moooooore sloooow motion. It's like if the movie was repeating itself to just cover the fact that the plot is invisible, an insult to your intelligence, that the action is sub-par and that the whole movie has no reason to exist other than bore you to death with it's absurd fetish of violence and it's "unique" sense of humour.

There's just so much stuff to point out, i'll just throw one more example right away: there's a scene where our two "heroes" and a third character are shooting each other within a very small range of distance. They never hit each other, at all, really. This is some Godfrey Ho level of silliness going on, and even Godfrey's movies can be enjoyable out of their sheer will to ham it up. BS on the other hand takes all this stuff so dead serious, this is no parody, no spoof whatsoever of the dumb clichés of the action genre. The movie is 100% sure that it has created a "cool" action piece, and that it's pro-vigilante/religious fanaticism message is something to be taken seriously.

There's nothing to like here, not even in an "ironic" way. The humour is Family Guy level of comedy, the plot just a mess, and the direction the disaster i just described. It's a movie that will remain buried in the sewers of bad cinema, and for the better.

Back in 99 everyone was expecting the new Star Wars movie, it was going to be the "big" sci-fi/fantasy event of the year, of the new millennium. Turns out the phantom menace was an atrocious mess of cgi and bad writing, same with the rest of the star wars prequels. The real sci-fi event of that year was not Lucas ego leaving a big stain in cinemas all over the world, it was a fun kung fu/anime hybrid of nerd power fantasies done right enough to engage the viewer and not make you feel that your intelligence was being insulted. It was the year of the matrix.

Now move to 03, the sequel is coming, the Wachowskis had an entire generation in the palm of their hands. The could had created the biggest and most successful cult-movie franchise this world has seen since....Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. The world was full of possibilities for the matrix, everything was coming out: video game, anime, action figures and anything else you could name of. History in the making. Then Reloaded opens in cinemas everywhere, and we have another mess of bad writing, poorly directed sequences, annoying cgi and so on. A franchise permanently killed (not even the money made from the expectations helped) dozens of fans writing endless rants "explaining" the movie in the internet and just a bunch of people coming out completely bored out of their minds.

It's not hard to see where everything goes wrong. The matrix reloaded has pretty much no reason to exist at all, just like the star wars prequels. It adds nothing to it's world, it actually destroys it. But mostly, is just a bore to watch, a huge incredible bore of a movie that will hammer your head with endless sequences of tedious fights that go nowhere, and a bunch of cgi stamped all over your face.

Neo is now god/Jesus/mahoma/whatever, the whole learning process from the first movie is over. He can defeat agents with his pinky, but not just him, pretty much everyone else can do that, except of course Trinity in a atrociously placed sequence for yet another embarrassing scene of super nerd powers. Remember how dangerous the agents were in the first movie? Every encounter could mean the death of any of the characters. Not here, they're just cgi filler for all the over-long action sequences that the Wachowskis could stuff here.

Remember how the first movie felt with a purpose? A clear series of objectives? Surviving the agents, protecting the location of zion, watching Neo learn about his abilities. None of that is here, there's a web of characters over a web of sub-plots over a mess of a "core" plot where Neo is suppose to re-start the whole matrix because the creator of the matrix made it that way. Sounds interesting? It isn't, the dialogues never once will engage you in any way possible, neither the acting, which seems to have hit rock-bottom after the fairly decent performances in the first movie. Several characters are now just filler, others fan-service (hello Mrs Bellucci) and there's just more and more stuff that never feels that it belongs there, or that is fun to watch.

There's probably a long long website/blog/vlog of matrix fans answering all the "questions" about this and that. But when a movie boils down to a long summary of Q&A, then it's not a movie anymore. It's a fan-fic in this case, a badly written one. It's not the "what" but the "how" that really matters, even if Reloaded was speaking about great truths in this world (not the case here by the way) it does so in the most utterly juvenile, incompetent and clueless way possible. Yeah man, Neo might be the reincarnation of every single human deity into one, but he will still look goofy as hell in those clothes and flying around everywhere.

It took George Lucas two decades to ruin his franchise, the Wachachachoskis did it in only 4 years. I guess this still could be worse, it could be a movie about blue furries fighting one dimensional space marines, or Indiana Jones fighting aliens.

A guy named Jesus upsets the local authorities with his ideas, he is betrayed by a friend and tortured for more than half hour in full detail. His body is slashed, drilled, and inflicted just about every physical pain you could think of. The camera centers all it's attention on the wounds, the flesh peeling away, the blood spurring everywhere. When our unfortunate lead gets crucified he's already a bloody pulp of a human being. He dies, and a couple of days later he revives.

Here's the real question, what purpose does this movie really had? To tell a story? Not here, there is no story at all, just a torture-porn flick (one that truly embodies the term) using some trivial back story to unleash it's carnival of tortures upon the main character. The audience looking forward to this movie already knew what to expect, they already know the story, the characters, they didn't discover anything they didn't knew already. What is it, then, the true purpose for this movie to exist? As a religious documment of sorts "the passion" might mean a lot to it's followers, but in pure cinematic terms is a waste of time, of money and a roller-coaster of bad taste disguising itself as something else. Nobody will remember this movie except as either the religious passage they already worshiped or, in the case of anyone else, as an unpleasant trip of pure visual pain that should not be repeated again.

Ultraviolet is a movie about a hot chick in tight clothes killing dozens and dozens of enemies, over and over. She never gets a scratch, never is in real danger, and defeats everyone with no effort whatsoever. After seeing her killing another entire squad of soldiers with just a stick you will be already bored out of your mind. It's like watching someone play a bad video game that takes itself way too seriously on it's (awful) cliché-fest excuse for a plot.

You think Milla is good looking? So do i, want to see her? Just search her name in google, there you go. Now, you just saved yourself the time and effort of tracking this thing. No need to thank me.

Tony Jaa is back in his first directorial effort (co-directing to be more specific) and the man delivers everything you would expect from a solid martial arts flick, and then some more.

The spiritual sequel to Ong Bak is quite an ambitious film, showing a wide diversity of fighting styles, using ancient thai history as the background. Jaa has certainly done his homework, because the movie has a strong old school HK vibe, but with a crude and gritty look. The plot is pretty much your standard martial arts/shaw bros 101 premise: hero takes revenge of his fallen comrades/family and so on, he begins as a weak victim to transform into a kick-ass machine. Nothing that any respectable MA movie aficionado haven't seen before, but the movie does it right and believable enough to engage the viewer. Not a complex story, but the motivations of the characters are convincing enough to move things on.

The fight sequences are effective, never repetitive and quite intense. I mean, if you can't enjoy a movie that has everything from crocodile fights to ninjas, samurais, elephants, people fighting like crows and leopards, a guy that throws daggers and another guy that uses explosives then you might want to report back to mother ship, because the goods of this planet are just too much for you. The abrupt ending, while anti-climatic, doesn't kill the mood of the film.

Far better from what anyone could expect, no idea why this go trashed by some people. Is no classic but it's a perfectly decent time waster. Which is more from what it can be say about other movies stuffing multiplexes these days.

A Bittersweet Life is cinematic bliss. A simple yet well told story with great performances and solid direction. A great choice for a soundtrack puts the final touch to this incredible dish. It plays a lot in the spirit of Jean Pierre Melville's fantastic and timeless film "Le Samourai", but with an identity of it's own.

The movie follows the journey of a man that has stopped enjoying life. When he finds another person that truly enjoys living in a way he can't something awakes inside him, is not love, it's a sense of joy that he hasn't experienced before. The best thing i could say about A Bittersweet Life is that it shows how the best stories are usually told in the most straight way possible, no need for complicated twists or sub-plots. You might end up with a bittersweet taste right at the end, and just as the taste goes down you will know how great it was.

"Acting is just faking" says a young and uprising gangster to a diva-like actor when they meet in an exclusive bar/restaurant near the beginning of "Rough Cut". The later surrounded by the controversy of his spoiled attitude on movie sets, the first dealing with a gang that has their main leader in jail. Their paths will cross once more, now as partners acting in the same movie, a crime action thriller, but under one condition: all their fight scenes must be real.

The premise of the film is quite interesting, an exploration of the movie-making process taken from the perspective of two young visceral men. The first half kept me quite interested, but after that things seem to fell apart under the weight of too many useless sub-plots that never go anywhere. We have the secret girlfriend of the actor, who he always hides from the press. Then there's an attempt of blackmail done to him, and then we have the gangster and the usual mafia problems that one has seen in almost every movie of the genre. At the end, i felt all this added little or nothing to the main plot that the movie was suppose to be trying to deal with. We see the characters go through a lot of stuff, but we never really get to know them well, and neither of these events seem to resonate in a logic way. The gangster start to gets soft because....because the script seems to want just that without any further development.

The acting is quite solid, and don't let the pretty boys that they put on the lead roles mislead you to think that this was just a teenage-girl bait. Mind you, i bet they did wanted a bit of that, but they do the best they can with the unfocused script they got. Rough Cut is not a total waste of time, but i just can't help to feel that it was such a wasted opportunity to tell a better story. Kim Ki Duk's involvement with the script might explain the problems, starting with that stupid rape scene. Playing the shock trick once more mr Kim? Grow up already, you look like Korea's Lars Von Trier when you do that.

Korean cinema takes the spotlight once more with this surprise box office hit thriller in it's native Korea. The story of a former cop turned pimp trying to figure out what is happening with several missing call girls. The positive reviews have been pointing out how clever the movie is in not following some of the usual traps and clichés of this kind of movies, yet they seem to fail in realizing that the plot, in order to work here, seems to follow even worse tricks and gimmicks.

Maybe i'm missing something here, because i seem to be on the minority, but for a movie that is trying so hard in being more "realistic" than other offers in the genre it relies heavily on silly coincidences and the characters making dumb decisions. Not only that but the movie seems to forget a lot of the things it establishes with the characters. How can a man that has killed so many people seems to be so inept in trying to kill one person? There's also an attempt of socio-political commentary that is actually just another plot device used to further complicate things even more. Then there's the attempt of giving some kind of psycho-religious motivation to the killer, that once more, adds nothing to the plot whatsoever.

In the technical aspects the movie is tight, it knows where to put the camera, how to keep the pacing and how to hook the viewer, at least for a while. Performances are convincing and help enhance the sense of tension the movie builds early on, but as the story progresses you just can't help to shake your head at all the stuff that is happening on screen. The weight of so many gimmicks and plot tricks fall over the movie eventually, and makes what it should be an intense cinematic experience into just a very annoying movie that doesn't know when to stop. Maybe if the script wasn't trying to hard to "impress" with it's twists and tricks things could be different.

I think i can agree with the core idea of the movie: many times the chase is better than the actual catch, but sometimes, after so many complications the catch ends up being not that exciting or even worth the wait. Korean cinema can do a lot better than this. It knows how to combien thrills and wit in far better ways, Memories of Murder is a fine example of that, a movie that by the way, doesn't deserve to be put in the same league of this one.

Ku Dong's life is going nowhere, spending his days beating people in the streets, he seems to be confined to repeat the same mistakes of his father, who happens to be already in jail. Even his younger brother is not far from going into the same tracks.

Then a struck of luck, if you could call it that, hits Ku Dong, a crime syndicate kidnaps him in order to train him to pass the police admission exam. It's something they have been doing for a while, sneaking moles in the police force to protect their leader, and making it easier to do dirty jobs here and there. The training of Ku Dong is both painful and hilarious, a very black humour that seems to be something natural for Korean cinema The thing is, Ku Dong really wanted to be in the force, at first just as an excuse to keep beating people, but eventually starts to realize this is his chance to give his life a real purpose.

Mr Socrates is not particularly original or "different" in terms of the genre, and it will be inevitable for many to compare it with everything from Ritchie/Tarantino stuff (almost a default practice with any crime/gritty movie made in the last years, ironic considering all the stuff Tarantino rips off from Asian cinema) to other Asian crime flicks of recent years. Neverless, the film manages to create it's own identity, and to be both funny and engaging without really pretending to be anything else. The story goes at a nice pacing, the performances are quite convincing, specially in the main lead. There's actually a transformation in the main character, and we can feel it. From an irresponsible thug to a person with a new found sense of direction in his life.

So, score one more for Korean genre cinema. While far from being the best of what the country, and the genre, can offer, i take this any day over many other poorly attempts of "cool-crime/comedy" flicks.